Maudlin Mourning Moo Cows

November 5th 2022 3:17 AM EST

The dairy cows the next town over, I have heard them crying all evening into past the midnight hour.

Their babies have been stolen, taken away, penned separately, or sold off.

Mother cows and babies crying through this last night into the early morning.

The echo of it plays, and at some points earlier today, I mistook it for perhaps an apartment neighbor in distress.

But I realized around midnight it was the dairy cow herd about 2 miles away.

The sounds of the calculated separation of calf from the cow, the business of milk.

This cow crying has happened before over the years, but I think now, with all the housing developments in the area, there aren’t enough wooded areas to buffer the sounds as in years past.

The mourning of cows bouncing off new houses and traveling through clearings and roads.

It is otherworldly this courus of sobbing cows and calves and keenly sorrowful, and the sound pulls at me.

I want to go and lean upon a cow and feel the huge warmth of its body and rest my head on its back and soothe my sorrow as theirs.

I want to go pull a spindly calf into my lap and rock it to sleep.

The skies are beautiful this time of year, dark nights and sparkling stars, a moon on the rise, and the sorrow of the cows, at this year, in this month with the world…